The Nord Electro 3 HP - Hammer Action Portable Keyboard. This hammer action keyboard is the first of its kind in the Electro range and features a host of high quality Nord Piano and Nord Sample Libraries including Mellotron and Chamberlin sounds. The emulation of organ characteristics is more accurate than ever, making the Electro 3 HP one of Nord's most organic keyboards yet.
Other refinements include the widening of the range of effects built in to the Electro 3 HP, and general playing feel and UI usability.
The 73 key Electro 3 is lightweight at just 11kg making it a great stage instrument. Clavia have also expanded on the Nord Electro 3 HP's ability to store "on-the-fly" patch changes so you can experiment with sound creation without worrying how you're going to get back to that killer patch you just made!
Here's what Clavia say about the Nord Electro 3 HP
The Electro 3 features a great organ section, fantastic pianos from the Nord Piano Library, Nord Sample Library compatibility, including the possibilty to create your own sample instruments and a selection of extremely versatile effects!
The Electro 3 HP has all the features of the original Electro 3 but sports a new 73-key Hammer Action Portable keybed, with a classic E-E range and 4 selectable Dynamic Response Curves. Amazingly, the Electro 3 HP only weighs 11 kg, making it the most ultra light weight professional Hammer Action keyboard on the market.
Main Features Electro 3 Series
- C1 Organ Tonewheel/transistor modeling
- Nord Piano- and Sample Library support
- String Resonance (generation 1)
- Exclusively licensed Mellotron and Chamberlin sounds
- Rotary Speaker simulation
- Flexible Effects
- Light weight
- Physical controls for all vital functions
Piano Section
The Nord Electro 3 series are compatible with the Nord Piano Library, a continuously expanding sound library filled with amazing grand pianos, uprights, vintage electric pianos, clavinets and harpsichords. Our sounds have been carefully selected for their unique characters and deliver stunning realism thanks to state of the art multisampling techniques and String Resonance, providing you with an unprecedented expressiveness. The sounds are included on the Nord Piano Library DVD and can also be downloaded for free in our Nord Piano Library section.
The Electro 3s come preloaded with a selection of these fine sounds. Replacing them couldn't be easier - just connect the Electro 3 to the USB port of your computer, start the Nord Sound Manager and drag and drop the desired sounds to the desired program location.
NEW! The Electro 3 HP additionally features a Long Release mode that adds a slightly longer release to Piano sounds, suitable for playing Legato Piano parts.
The Electro 3 HP also has a dedicated button for disabling the String Resonance feature temporarily.
Nord Sample Library and Sample Editor
With the Nord Sample Library support Electro 3 owners have access to our exclusively licensed Mellotron and Chamberlin sounds and a wide selection of quality sounds from leading sample producers. See the Nord Sample Library section to learn more and to listen to the sounds available! The Nord Sample library is updated on a regular basis and new additions can be downloaded for free!
The included Nord Sample Editor makes it possible to add any sound you want to the Electro 3. The Sample Editor can use audio files in the .wav format and has great tools to assist you in getting the results you want. Mapping several samples across the keyboard or creating seamless loops has never been easier.
The Electro 3 series has 68 MB of dedicated sample memory and our efficient lossless compression algorithm makes it possible for us to use samples of up to three times the size compared to a standard linear sample player.
Organ Section
The growling sound and soul of a B3 is hard to replicate faithfully in a digital instrument. Sampling is definitely not an option if you want to create a living, breathing tonewheel sound. We've spent years perfecting our digital models and the Electro 3 contains our award winning second generation tonewheel model.
The attention to minute details is stunning, the Electro 3 is even equipped with four selectable tonewheel modes, that stretches from a clean sound to battered unit with the most dramatic setting; Vintage 3. This setting even produces a sound in the background of its own, even if you don't touch any keys.
It's all in the details
Every function in a B3 has been considered and examined in great detail, to make the Electro 3 as true to the original sound as possible. There are key clicks derived from the original busbar behavior and the energy robbing that produces the gentle compression when you do that massive palm smear across the keyboard. To get the response right, we have included the option to trigger the organ sounds at the very top of a key's range, making it react just as fast as the original. And sometimes we couldn't resist adding functions that went a bit further, like the option to either include or exclude the 9th drawbar when Percussion was activated.
Vox and Farfisa
The Farfisa* and Vox* models are just as impressive as the B3. The massive savage sound created by their 12-top oscillator frequency-divider designs is of course another nosample zone in the Electro 3; you have the same behavior and unique response from our models as in the original instruments. The Farfisa Compact Deluxe, considered by many to be the mother of transistor organs, involves routing matrixes and complex filter combinations that offer a tailored sound with massive energy and high-end.
The Vox* Continental's brute design brings you a more hollow tone, but with a very intense character. Both these transistor organs have their own unique, irreplaceable personalities. Combine them with any of the Electro 3's speaker simulations, add some distortion, adjust the EQ and they will definitely get you through any organ gig with flying colors.
Rotary speaker simulation
The rotary speaker simulation originates from the award winning Nord C1 Combo Organ, acclaimed for its sound quality. The rotary speaker incorporates the acoustic variations that occur when a physical speaker spreads the sound in a room, providing the full experience of when air is moved around.
The Electro 3's rotary also features a great function in the addition of the Rotary Stop Mode. This allows users to switch between fast and stopped rotation and back again by using either the controls on the panel or with a foot pedal connected to the Rotor Pedal input. This is a crucial functionality that mimics the behavior of early one-speed original rotary speaker units.
Those of you who are picky about the rotary behaviors will be pleased to find several user adjustable settings like speed and acceleration times for both treble and bass rotors. These options, as well as all the other System, MIDI and Sound Menu functions are written on the right side of the panel, a great help for all those moments when the manual decided to stay at home.
Organ split
Using the Organ Split mode, you can play two different organ registrations in a dual manual fashion, one sound on either side of a user definable keyboard split point. Connect a second MIDI keyboard to the Electro 3, to use the organ split functionality, but in a true, dual manual setup.
Effect Section
The Nord Electro 3 is equipped with a great selection of high quality effects including a lush sounding reverb with five different reverb types. There is also a selection of tremolo, panning, wah-wah, phaser, flanger, chorus effects, and a ring modulator.
For adding a final touch to your sound, there's a selection of amplifier simulations - for anything from warm fuzz to devastating mayhem.
A user friendly three-band EQ with a sweepable mid-range and a compressor can be added to the final stage of the audio path.
The new Electro 3 HP additionally features a flexible Delay effect with Tap-Tempo, Rate, Amount and a stereo Ping-Pong mode.
Performance
Changing, editing and storing presets is easy, and there is also a Live mode that automatically saves what you're doing. The Program memory can hold 128 different Programs, and these are organized in 2 Program Banks with 64 Pages each.
One of our the main focuses is to have dedicated knobs and buttons for all vital functions, and keep the interface simple and easy to use during a performance. We don't believe in submenus, and the only functions in the Electro 3 that only are available through menus have been printed on the panel so you don't need to read the manual.
The Electro 3 HP has 4 Live locations, the Electro 3 has one. Also the Program memory of the Electro 3 is organized in 4 Program Banks with 32 Pages each.
